In this month’s episode, four members of The Rag-NERD-rok Crew step up to answer one of the toughest questions facing Marvel geeks for the past fifty years: just who is the best X-Men character? Join the guys and special guest host Derek for a debate to determine which hero—or villain—fits the bill. Then, after the break, our good friend Will joins us for a special Rag-NERD-rok version of The Newlywed Game where Ed and Meyer compete to see which one of them knows him better. Finally, we share some very special emails we received from loyal listener Robert P.

Woo whee. That apocalypse sure was something, wasn’t it? Remember all of the explosions and death? We didn’t want to take any chances, so all of the Rag-NERD-rok guys hunkered down in the Rag-NERD-bunker to await our eventual demise. We figured that, while we were down there, we might as well record a podcast episode. And what better way to ring in the end of the world than by talking about our favorite things that we all discovered in 2012? After that, we decided to spend some time talking about the things we were going to miss in 2013 because the world had ended. There’s also a Will Interview, because we wanted to end our time on this planet with a smile.

This episode was recorded in our bunker on Dec. 21 and posted automatically. Hopefully we’re all alive in the future, in which case most of this is superfluous. If not, it’s been nice knowing you, Planet Earth.

All of us here at Rag-NERD-rok came to a surprising realization a few months ago: apparently we’re pretty good at roleplaying. It never really dawned on us that during those countless hours spent in basements and tents (we’ll get to that in the episode), we were honing a skill. But now here we are with our very own podcast, and people really seem to enjoy the Actual Plays we post. So much so that our APs seem to be more popular than our actual podcasts (which we’re going to keep doing, if only out of spite). We decided to impart some of the skill and knowledge we’ve cultivated through hours of playing, dice-rolling and in-fighting. We talk about how we all conceive and play our characters and even share horror stories from our most infamous games. Later, we all share our favorite stories about Will playing in our games and his foibles.

We in the Rag-NERD-rok Crew have elected to participate in the massive play-test of the newest release of Dungeons and Dragons, D&D Next! Join us, along with special guest and veteran D&D player Derek, for an in-depth discussion of the new version of the classic role-playing game, its strengths, weaknesses and peculiarities. Later, we touch on this year’s E3 in another 10 in 10 segment, and Will stops by to read us his children’s story, Paul the Adventurer. It’s a fun-filled, orc-slaying, dungeon-looting episode, so grab your dice and pray to Pelor that you roll 20s!